Huawei develops 'entirely Chinese' homegrown desktop PC system

Huawei develops 'entirely Chinese' homegrown desktop PC system — features 10-core, 20-thread Kirin X90 consumer CPU and Huawei's own HarmonyOS operating system, but Western supply chain lingers

Goodbye, Wintel? Software for Windows too?

Huawei has introduced its first desktop PCs powered by its own 10-core processor as well as proprietary HarmonyOS operating system, reports the Southern China Morning Post. The company claims that the CPU and the OS are built entirely of using 'components manufactured' in China, which matters when it comes national security and domestic supply chains inside the sanctioned country. But whether these machines are truly 'entirely domestic' is an open question.

The Huawei Qinyun HM650 and HM650g desktop PCs come with 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory (probably made by China's CXMT) and either a 256GB or 512GB SSD (probably made by Chinese flash maker YMTC) are powered by the company's Kirin X90 system-on-chip, which originally debuted in Huawei's consumer systems in 2025. The key ingedient of the system it its processor, which features 10 Huawei-designed Armv8-based Taishan CPU cores in a 4+4+2 configuration, with all cores supporting simultaneous multithreading (SMT) to execute up to 20 threads simultameusly. The chip also integrates Huawei's Maleoon graphics processing unit (Arm Mali-based) and a dedicated neural processing unit for AI workloads.

Although Huawei doesn't officially disclose the Kirin X90's manufacturing process, a teardown analysis by TechInsights confirmed that the CPU is manufactured by SMIC using its 7nm-class N+2 process technology. This makes the X90 an example of Huawei's ability to develop PC-class processors using domestically available semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, albeit on a process technology that trails leading-edge nodes from Intel, TSMC, and Samsung.

The most interesting aspect of the Qinyun HM650 series is certainly Huawei's claim that all of its new system's components, including the processor, memory, storage, power supply, and wireless connectivity are manufactured domestically. Such certification itself does not necessarily mean that the entire semiconductor supply chain behind the machine is Chinese. While the CPU, memory, and storage chips are fabricated domestically, they are still made using foreign manufacturing equipment (from the Netherlands, U.S., and Japan), materials (from Japan), intellectual property (from the UK), and electronic design automation (EDA software from the U.S. and partly from China) tools.

Meanwhile, the claim about the operating system developed in China sounds ambitious. The machines run Huawei's HarmonyOS Enterprise Edition, which certainly reduces their dependence on foreign technology suppliers. Unlike conventional PCs that rely on Microsoft's Windows operating system, Huawei's desktops use a software platform developed and maintained by a Chinese company. Furthermore, unlike earlier HarmonyOS versions that incorporated Linux components, the HarmonyOS Enterprise Edition uses Huawei's own kernel and software architecture. This indeed gives Huawei greater control over operating system development, security updates, and integration with its hardware, although compatibility with existing Windows applications could remain a limitation for enterprise customers that rely on software by multinational corporations for Windows.

Keeping all these things in mind, can we say that Huawei's Qinyun HM650 series relies entirely on components developed and made in China? Probably yes. Yet, with major caveats, including a semiconductor supply chain that relies on tools and software designed and produced elsewhere. Furthermore, incompatibility of the OS with software designed for Windows could be a limitation for some customers.

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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.